Once again, this week's championship games prove that in the current era....offense is king.

The top two QB's and their top offenses are going to the Super Bowl. The top defense is going home. Will the Dolphins finally learn something about the modern passing game and draft or acquire a top WR??? Doubtful....but there is always hope. Defense is important, but it only rarely wins championships....and when it does, it probably features one of the top 10 defenses of all NFL history.

_________________Philbin's countenance exudes confidence!1984 was so long ago...Will there ever be another rainbow?

Once again, this week's championship games prove that in the current era....offense is king.

The top two QB's and their top offenses are going to the Super Bowl. The top defense is going home. Will the Dolphins finally learn something about the modern passing game and draft or acquire a top WR??? Doubtful....but there is always hope. Defense is important, but it only rarely wins championships....and when it does, it probably features one of the top 10 defenses of all NFL history.

I'm with you, although the Vikings lost a game they should have won by a wide margin they do have a strong "D". But they can also toss it around.

Plus it's way more exciting. I wasn't around pre-Marino, but it just seems the phins haven't been winning because were not doing what were suppose to be doing. Seems to me, since it's South Florida, we need to open it up, bring out the toys, and start lighting up the scoreboard. I'm happy with what were building but I'd like to start blowing a few teams out. I'm fairly certain I haven't missed a game (atleast since Sunday Ticket came out) and I can only remember winning 3 or 4 games by a big margin in the last 4-5 years. Enough of this ball control. Grip it and rip it.

Once again, this week's championship games prove that in the current era....offense is king.

The top two QB's and their top offenses are going to the Super Bowl. The top defense is going home. Will the Dolphins finally learn something about the modern passing game and draft or acquire a top WR??? Doubtful....but there is always hope. Defense is important, but it only rarely wins championships....and when it does, it probably features one of the top 10 defenses of all NFL history.

I'm with you, although the Vikings lost a game they should have won by a wide margin they do have a strong "D". But they can also toss it around. quote]

Was it just me or did the refs hand the Saints the game? The PI call was more then questionable especially with the game on the line there. Then the catch when he never had clomplete possesion of the ball and it hit the ground. I have no problem with the Saints goin instead of the Vikes but i hate to see it come down to a few calls by the refs

Then the catch when he never had clomplete possesion of the ball and it hit the ground. I have no problem with the Saints goin instead of the Vikes but i hate to see it come down to a few calls by the refs

He had the ball pinned against his hip and it wasn't moving. It's basically like the David Tyree catch for the Giants in the Super Bowl, just not pinned to his helmet.

_________________

Two-thirds of the earth is covered by water. The rest is covered by Vontae Davis.

Balanced teams, that can run and pass on offense, have a great QB and have a defense that can stop the run usually fair pretty well. The Teams going to the Superbowl have offenses that can run or pass based on what the opposing defense gives them. FWIW, the Saints defense forced all those turnovers that beat the Vikes.

I think defense still wins championships but when you get to this point these teams are so elite. Elite menaning they are so well balanced. The Saints & the Colts have great defenses but the offense is just so prolific they get more press. The Vikings fall into this as well. The Jets although made a great run the balance thing caught up to them in the end when the Colts made great adjustments at half time & the Jet offense just became ordinary again & the Colt offense just figured the Jet defense out. The Colt coaching staff deserves a bunch of credit. But when you have Peyton who I think really could be the best ever , definetly the smartest QB ever you knew no matter how much they fell behind , especially early they would come back.So I do agree you need that high power quick strike offense to carry you , that swarming Defense that keeps the games close when you play these teams is just as if not more important.

That defense had the Jets up by 10 until Peyton decided to stand in there and take a few in the chops. The Saints also put so many hits on Favre he wasn't the same QB by the 3rd quarter. I noticed several balls he threw early and missed his target in the 2nd half. Those INTs were a direct result of not wanting to take another blast.

When looking at defense, you can't just look at yards allowed. Turnovers caused and points allowed are important stats also.

If you lead the league in fewest yards allowed but don't cause too many turnovers, you're not really the top defense.

That's true, though I heard somebody say over the weekend that forcing a 3-and-out is as good as a turnover. Thought that was interesting.

Not quite, but close. Typically turnovers (unless its something like an INT on a long bomb) yield better field position than making the other team punt. That being said, there's nothing shabby about making another team go 3 and out, it's almost as demoralizing to their offense as a turnover.

_________________"Shula's the only coach I ever met who can take his'n & beat your'n, then take your'n & beat his'n."-Bum

That defense had the Jets up by 10 until Peyton decided to stand in there and take a few in the chops. The Saints also put so many hits on Favre he wasn't the same QB by the 3rd quarter. I noticed several balls he threw early and missed his target in the 2nd half. Those INTs were a direct result of not wanting to take another blast.

I don't know about that, Favre was a warrior yesterday. That second INT was just bad judgement. That guy has to be hurting today, there were some unbelievable cheap shots in that game. The first interception is when he got his ankle rolled up on (should have been an easy flag).

I got the impression the Saints wanted to take Favre out of the game no matter how many flags they would get, to bad they didn't come.

Made me wonder if Henne would have taken that kind of punishment and kept on ticking.

How many Super Bowls have we seen where the high flying offense loses to the great defense? Rams vs. Patriots, Bucs vs. Raiders, Giants vs. Patriots, Dolphins vs. 49ers, Giants vs. Broncos, any Super Bowl involving the Bills.

You guys are just proving my point when you bring up the Buc's super bowl win, or the Raven's win.....those defenses were amongst the greatest defenses of all time. They were an exception and not the rules. I would include the '85 Bears with that group.....

The recent Steelers' teams featured potent offenses to go along with their defense. I remember the first bowl win they had with Roethlisberger.....he got them there by slinging the rock in the playoffs. He was horrible in the super bowl, but completed big passes when needed....and the refs jobbed the Seahawks.

In 2005:"During the regular season, the Steelers were 9-3 with Roethlisberger at quarterback and 2-2 without him. He led the league in Yards Per Attempt with an 8.90, and finished third in passer rating behind Peyton Manning and Carson Palmer with a 98.6."

In 2008 post season play:AFC Divisional Playoffs vs. San Diego Chargers (W 35-24): Roethlisberger shook off past demons of returning from injury to lead the Steelers to a 35-24 victory against the Chargers. After a late TD drive to close the first half with a 14-10 lead, Roethlisberger converted three third-and-long passes on a 7:56 TD drive to start the second half, putting the Steelers up by double-digits for the rest of the game. He completed 17 of 26 passes for 181 yards and a TD while being sacked just once, with no turnovers. After the game, it was revealed that his injury suffered against Cleveland in week 17 was a spinal-cord concussion.

AFC Championship vs. Baltimore Ravens (W 23-14): Roethlisberger threw for 255 yards, one TD no turnovers to help the Steelers beat Baltimore for the third time in the '08–'09 season and return to the Super Bowl. It was Roethlisberger's seventh playoff win in his first five seasons, moving him past Troy Aikman for second most all-time (first is Tom Brady with nine).

Super Bowl 43 vs. Arizona Cardinals (W 27-23): Wanting to atone for his performance in Super Bowl XL, Roethlisberger led the Steelers to one of the more dramatic victories in Super Bowl history. On the first two offensive drives, Roethlisberger passed for 122 yards on seven of eight passing attempts, which is one yard shy of his total amount from his first Super Bowl start. The Steelers led 10-0 and went into halftime up 17-7. The lead grew to 20-7 before Arizona mounted a comeback. Trailing for the first time in the game, 23-20, with 2:30 remaining in the game, Roethlisberger took the field to start the winning drive. After a holding penalty on the first play, Roethlisberger marched the Steelers 88 yards in eight plays, hooking up with game MVP Santonio Holmes four times for 73 yards on the drive, including the six-yard TD pass that put the Steelers ahead with 0:35 remaining. Overall, Roethlisberger finished 21 of 30 for 256 yards, one TD, and one INT. He had a passer rating of 93.2.

_________________Philbin's countenance exudes confidence!1984 was so long ago...Will there ever be another rainbow?

In the NFL you cannot consistently rely on scoring a ton of points to win. Even the best offenses get stumped. Great defenses can more consistently hold opponents to less than 17 far more often than the best offenses can more consistently score 35 or more.

As my previous sig stated, "A great RB is nice. A great QB is better. But it is best to be able to stop someone first."

_________________A good RB is nice, a good QB even better, but it's best to be able to stop someone first.

6 out of the 10 go to the defense... some of the offensive ones are even questionable...

I think this list is more up for debate than just this is offense this one is defense. I see two clear cut defensive wins and 4 offensive wins.

We're not talking about defensive wins. We're talking about having a stout defense for the entire season. In this context one could easily argue that the Pats, in the years v Eagles and Panthers, relied heavily on defense. It wasn't until they had the Brady-Moss-Welker trio that they became a high flying offensive juggernaut (and they haven't won a SB with them either). The 1 SB appearance they had since their offensive explosion they lost to a superior defense.

It's tough to score a lot of points. It's not as tough to keep teams from scoring a lot of points.

_________________A good RB is nice, a good QB even better, but it's best to be able to stop someone first.

6 out of the 10 go to the defense... some of the offensive ones are even questionable...

I think this list is more up for debate than just this is offense this one is defense. I see two clear cut defensive wins and 4 offensive wins.

We're not talking about defensive wins. We're talking about having a stout defense for the entire season. In this context one could easily argue that the Pats, in the years v Eagles and Panthers, relied heavily on defense. It wasn't until they had the Brady-Moss-Welker trio that they became a high flying offensive juggernaut (and they haven't won a SB with them either). The 1 SB appearance they had since their offensive explosion they lost to a superior defense.

It's tough to score a lot of points. It's not as tough to keep teams from scoring a lot of points.

I believe that it is understood that it is not about defensive wins but having a great defense looking at the years work. The Patriots were more balanced than a great defensive team in wins vs eagles and panthers. Did they lose to a superior defense in the Giants. I don't know if I agree with that. Did the Giants play great defensively that day, obviously, but not over the course of the year. I believe that game is an exception to the rule, the old any given sunday stuff. Patriots probably win that game 9 out of 10 times. Pats were the #1 offense and #4 defense, while the Giants were the #7 defense.

I saw this show on the NFL Network once called The Top 10 Football Myths. I didn't remember the list, but I found it on another forum:

10. Tackle stats are not accurate 9. QB's need a rocket arm to be successful 8. Teams should punt on 4th down 7. Turnovers matter 6. You need to run to set up the pass 5. Icing the kicker works 4. Dome teams are soft 3. Defense wins championships2. It is next to impossible to repeat as champions 1. The prevent defense does not work

Unrelated to topic, regarding #8: In my opinion, the first coach that comes in the NFL and rarely punts is going to revolutionize the pro game.

I saw this show on the NFL Network once called The Top 10 Football Myths. I didn't remember the list, but I found it on another forum:

10. Tackle stats are not accurate 9. QB's need a rocket arm to be successful 8. Teams should punt on 4th down 7. Turnovers matter 6. You need to run to set up the pass 5. Icing the kicker works 4. Dome teams are soft 3. Defense wins championships2. It is next to impossible to repeat as champions 1. The prevent defense does not work

Unrelated to topic, regarding #8: In my opinion, the first coach that comes in the NFL and rarely punts is going to revolutionize the pro game.

I saw this show on the NFL Network once called The Top 10 Football Myths. I didn't remember the list, but I found it on another forum:

10. Tackle stats are not accurate 9. QB's need a rocket arm to be successful 8. Teams should punt on 4th down 7. Turnovers matter 6. You need to run to set up the pass 5. Icing the kicker works 4. Dome teams are soft 3. Defense wins championships2. It is next to impossible to repeat as champions 1. The prevent defense does not work

Unrelated to topic, regarding #8: In my opinion, the first coach that comes in the NFL and rarely punts is going to revolutionize the pro game.

Yeah he's gonna revolutionize himself out of a job.

maybe, maybe not. If there is guidlines I think it would work. Something like 4th and 5 or less inside your opponents 50 and 4th and 2 or less from anywhere outside your own 35.

In the NFL you cannot consistently rely on scoring a ton of points to win. Even the best offenses get stumped. Great defenses can more consistently hold opponents to less than 17 far more often than the best offenses can more consistently score 35 or more.

As my previous sig stated, "A great RB is nice. A great QB is better. But it is best to be able to stop someone first."

In the NFL you cannot consistently rely on scoring a ton of points to win. Even the best offenses get stumped. Great defenses can more consistently hold opponents to less than 17 far more often than the best offenses can more consistently score 35 or more.

As my previous sig stated, "A great RB is nice. A great QB is better. But it is best to be able to stop someone first."

This is the philosophy that got us 0 playoff wins for a decade.

No, not really. It STARTS with defense...then you can get the offense going. How many teams could score but had lousy defenses have won a championship? Teams like the Chiefs, Bengals, and Indianapolis (before Dungy) come to mind

Now flip it...how many teams have won championships with a lousy offense, and great defense. The Bears have almost done it twice. The Bucs weren't necessarily lousy on offense, but they weren't very dynamic. Ravens for sure.

You could even take it farther and say, how many playoff wins do teams with great offense win but no defense have vs the opposite?The Jets went quite far. The Ravens last year. The Bears went to a Super Bowl with just defense. Those Bengals, Chiefs, Colts teams never won in the playoffs.Marino's teams never won a championship. Brady's offense never won a title without great defense. You NEED defense, and offensively you just have to be able to score every now and then...and even then you can rely on your defense to do that.If you have a prolific offense and average defense, teams will outscore you. It's just how it works.

Does defense win championships?Well, of course. And so does offense. But the conventional wisdom that "defense wins championships" implies that defense is particularly more important than offense in the playoffs and the Super Bowl. This post will begin to look at whether defense really does matter more than offense in the NFL by comparing the right tails of the performance distributions of offenses and defenses--where playoff teams come from.

This time of year we are helped to the standard slew of articles declaring that defense is more important. Here is the latest example from ESPN.com. It's a good example because it suffers from some fatal flaws (itemized by Phil Birnbaum here). Typically, these articles look at past examples of NFL champions and comparing the offensive and defensive rankings of each team. I don't think this kind of analysis is necessarily very valid--

•They are anecdotal•The sample size is usually very small, and results are probably not statistically significant--just due to chance

•If the sample size is large, it covers very distinct periods of NFL passing and blocking rules, confounding any results

•If the sample size is limited to one period of NFL rules, it can be dominated by one or two particular teams would skew the results (PIT in the 70s or NE currently, for example)•Often, the analysis shows that defense is indeed important, but not more important than offense•The rankings of each squad is almost always based on points scored or total yards, which are more often than not deceiving about the true performance of a squad

................

This means that great offenses tend to be "better" than great defenses, and terrible offenses tend to be "worse" than terrible defenses.

.....

So if a great offense usually trumps a great defense, where does the perception that "defense wins championships" come from? Truly dominant defenses such as the 2000 Ravens, 2002 Buccaneers, or 1985 Bears are relatively rare, and are therefore more memorable. Also, defense has traditionally been overlooked, at least by the mainstream hype-laden media. Even football insiders seem to focus on offense, demonstrated by who is inducted in the Hall of Fame, or who the MVPs tend to be. So the phrase "defense wins championships" may really mean "defense helps win championships more than most people think they do."

...........

So when looking at the NFL as a whole, offense and defense balances symmetrically. But when focusing on the right tails of performance, where playoff teams come from, we see that great offenses out-pace equally great defenses.

In the last post I indirectly analyzed playoff games by looking at regular season games that only featured opponents who both went on to win at least 10 games. We saw that teams with the better running games actually won less than 50% of the time.

In this post, I'll look at actual playoff games directly. Compared with the 114 "good vs. good" regular season games I looked at yesterday, there were 50 playoff games, plus 5 Super Bowls, in the 2002 through 2006 seasons.

The table below lists the winning percentage of the team with the superior season-long performance in each stat. In other words, the team with the better [stat] won [x] percent of the time. The regular season good vs. good match-ups are also listed for comparison. (The home win percentage excludes the five Super Bowls during the period.)

Stat Good vs Good Playoffs

Home 59.6 64.0

O Run 45.6 45.5

D Run** 48.2 67.3

O Pass* 52.6 63.6

D Pass 51.8 56.3

O Int Rate 50.9 58.1

D Int Rate 55.3 58.1

O Fum Rate** 55.3 40.0

D FFum Rate 54.4 54.5

Pen Rate 47.3 52.7

** = good vs. good / playoff difference is significant at the p=0.05 level* = good vs. good / playoff difference is significant at the p=0.10 level

The home team won more often in the playoffs than in good vs good regular season match-ups, which is expected because higher seeded teams host the playoff games.

The team with the better run efficiency won only 45.5% of the 55 playoff games during the '02-'06 period. Keep in mind the small sample size could make these results misleading. 45.5% is only 2.5 games below 50%. But the result echoes the same result for the regular season good vs. good match-ups.

Defensive run efficiency is a different story. Although the team with superior run stopping ability won only 48.7% of the regular season good vs. good match-ups, it won 67.3% of playoff games. This is a striking difference to say the least, especially considering how unimportant run defense is based on regression models of regular season games.

The passing game stands out as well. Both offensive and defensive passing stats appear to be more important in the playoffs. Interception rates also appear very important.

Another striking result is that of offensive fumble rates. The team with the lower fumble rate wins only 40% of playoff games. As one of the more random stats, it's not too surprising to see a spurious result for fumble rate, but 40% is fairly low, even for such a small sample size.

I suspect that coaches may become too conservative in the playoffs, relying on the run. This might explain why having a good running game doesn't help teams win and why the ability to stop the run suddenly becomes very important in the playoffs.

My own gut feeling is that coaches don't coach to win. They coach to avoid a loss. It sounds inane, but there is a difference. Maybe the play-calling in the playoffs becomes even more timid. But then again, perhaps the January weather has something to do with it. Previous research has established the importance of climate, especially when dome teams play outdoors. Weather may explain the 67% win percentage of teams with the better run defense. Defense may win championships after all, particularly run defense.

In the NFL you cannot consistently rely on scoring a ton of points to win. Even the best offenses get stumped. Great defenses can more consistently hold opponents to less than 17 far more often than the best offenses can more consistently score 35 or more.

As my previous sig stated, "A great RB is nice. A great QB is better. But it is best to be able to stop someone first."

This is the philosophy that got us 0 playoff wins for a decade.

It has nothing to do with philosophy, but that we proved time and again that we had no ability to draft.

_________________A good RB is nice, a good QB even better, but it's best to be able to stop someone first.

Well....I would rather win a bowl this decade....I don't know if I want to wait through "the cycle."

I agree that balance is good. I also agree that having a decent defense is important. However, if your offense has to be able to score quickly and often these days. The Jets had the #1 defense and Peyton Manning just used them. I can see potential for Henne to be a top caliber QB, but not with lame talent around him. You need WR's to get open, and gain yards after the catch. So far, I only see Hartline as capable of doing that....and he is over-achieving big time at the moment. Our TE's are less than sensational (understatement) and our WR corps is not adequate. We have no #1 threat to stretch the field. Ginn is clearly a lost cause at WR. Bess and Camarillo essentially fill the same role....and are not a threat to break away after a catch.

The championship games on Sunday were won by offensive firepower. Even after collecting 5 turnovers, the Saints almost lost the game to an offense that simply blew them away in total yards. Favre threw that game away. The Saints' defense got the breaks and the Vikes squandered a great offensive effort. If the Saints' offense had not been able to score a bunch of points themselves, against a stout defense, they would not have won that game.....despite 5 turnovers!! The Colts spotted the Jets an 11 point lead and then Manning took over....engineering a 3 play TD drive in under a minute (iirc) at the end of the half....that was followed by a deluge of points in the 2nd half.....and no more scores at all from the Jets' pedestrian offense. The #1 defense in the league was flat out shredded.

_________________Philbin's countenance exudes confidence!1984 was so long ago...Will there ever be another rainbow?